Pinpoint Your Target with Geofencing

By Jenny Brandenburg

At the latest sporting event you attended, did you see an ad on your smartphone promoting a nearby restaurant inviting you to stop in after the game? You might have thought it was a little creepy this restaurant knew you were there, but it’s called geofencing—an effective marketing tactic if executed correctly.

Geofencing is a location-based digital marketing tactic that lets marketers place ads targeted towards smartphone users in a defined geographic area. You chose a radius around a location, and when someone enters that space, they are served an ad while using the internet on their mobile device. It can be used for both business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) marketing.

For example, as customers walk into a shopping mall, retailers can target people with offers and coupons. A car dealership can target people when they visit a competitor down the street. Exhibitors at a trade show can use geofencing to target attendees, improve brand awareness and traffic to your booth or website, which in turn generates leads.

Here are some tips to effectively use geofencing:

Keep your geofence small. A small business dentist should not geofence a large metro area because he may get calls from more patients than he can take on. Instead, he should stick to the neighborhood or suburb around his office.

Your message should be relevant. Based on the time of day, day of the week, time of year or geographic location, your message needs to make sense. If your restaurant is booked solid for dinner but your lunch crowd is sparse, geofence around your location before lunch time to get people looking for a place to eat.

Have a clear call to action (and make it a good one.) It’s one thing to notify people about your location, but it’s another to have an incentive to come to your business. Provide discounts or offers to bring people to you and have it be attractive enough so people act on it.

Measure campaign results. Look at results in real time to determine if it’s a successful campaign or if some tweaks need to be made. Perhaps the creative isn’t strong enough or the area you’re geofencing isn’t quite right. Analyze the results to help determine future campaign strategies.

Jenny Brandenburg

Media Buyer

Formerly an account relationship specialist at the Oshkosh Northwestern, Jenny brings over five years of experience in news, media, ad sales and customer relations to her role at Insight. Possessing a can-do attitude, keen attention to detail and natural talent for organization, Jenny is a valuable part of the media department at Insight. She holds a journalism degree from UW-Oshkosh, with an emphasis in advertising/public relations.